I seen a post on FB and someone getting rid of a Sapphire Nitro+ RX580 8GB for spares and repairs for £20 so I thought know what I am going to send this guy a message.
So I go jump in the car and travel to his address, he opens the door and then presents me the card, Not what I were expecting as he forgot to mention the plastic shroud is cracked and falling off. The heatsink is bent like a banana and 1 fan just crumbled and the other has about 4 missing blades. the IO plate is bent too.
So anyway as I travelled nearly 30 miles I just handed the £20 so it wasn't a wasted trip.
Now that I am back home place the graphics card on my breakfast bar and inspect it closer, literally only 3 screws were holding it all together. pulled off the cracked shroud and and unscrewed the heatsink to find this underneath, (Yes I am speechless and horrified too) blue paste with a minty smell to it surely this cannot be toothpaste? lol. At this point thinking I am definitely wasting my time now.
Proceed to clean all the blue stuff off and around the VRM mosfets I can see some SMD caps floating in the blue stuff. Now that the card is cleaned I can see that the card is actually in good shape no scratches or components knocked off other than the SMD caps I found earlier. soldered the caps back on 1 had a torn trace luckily still had a tiny bit of copper left.
Before I make a start and bending the heatsink and plastic welding the shroud, I just went ahead and plugged the card in and see if it booted, well it did post but no display so turn off computer and check the ports the display ports look find and checking the next port some corrosion on the HDMI contacts. gave the ports a good sprinkle of IPA and plugged in the card and boom! posts with a display. I didn't expect this card to be working after seeing the state I first seen it.
So I get to work on straightening the heatsink sorting the shroud out. got out the box of screws I collected of the years and managed to find enough to get it all back together, I left the original fans off as they were long gone. I ran out of zip ties so cellotaped 2 120mm fans on for time being as I ordered some replacement stock fans from china.
ran Kombuster for a couple of hours and it is working perfectly fine and temps holding around mid 60's.
The graphics card looks like some mad scientist experiment, but getting a RX580 for £20 and sorting someone's mess. Saved this card from the computer hardware heaven.
So I go jump in the car and travel to his address, he opens the door and then presents me the card, Not what I were expecting as he forgot to mention the plastic shroud is cracked and falling off. The heatsink is bent like a banana and 1 fan just crumbled and the other has about 4 missing blades. the IO plate is bent too.
So anyway as I travelled nearly 30 miles I just handed the £20 so it wasn't a wasted trip.
Now that I am back home place the graphics card on my breakfast bar and inspect it closer, literally only 3 screws were holding it all together. pulled off the cracked shroud and and unscrewed the heatsink to find this underneath, (Yes I am speechless and horrified too) blue paste with a minty smell to it surely this cannot be toothpaste? lol. At this point thinking I am definitely wasting my time now.
Proceed to clean all the blue stuff off and around the VRM mosfets I can see some SMD caps floating in the blue stuff. Now that the card is cleaned I can see that the card is actually in good shape no scratches or components knocked off other than the SMD caps I found earlier. soldered the caps back on 1 had a torn trace luckily still had a tiny bit of copper left.
Before I make a start and bending the heatsink and plastic welding the shroud, I just went ahead and plugged the card in and see if it booted, well it did post but no display so turn off computer and check the ports the display ports look find and checking the next port some corrosion on the HDMI contacts. gave the ports a good sprinkle of IPA and plugged in the card and boom! posts with a display. I didn't expect this card to be working after seeing the state I first seen it.
So I get to work on straightening the heatsink sorting the shroud out. got out the box of screws I collected of the years and managed to find enough to get it all back together, I left the original fans off as they were long gone. I ran out of zip ties so cellotaped 2 120mm fans on for time being as I ordered some replacement stock fans from china.
ran Kombuster for a couple of hours and it is working perfectly fine and temps holding around mid 60's.
The graphics card looks like some mad scientist experiment, but getting a RX580 for £20 and sorting someone's mess. Saved this card from the computer hardware heaven.
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